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iFilm Infringement Could Blunt Viacom's YouTube Argument
Radio Silence writes "Infringing videos on iFilm could undermine Viacom's case against YouTube. Although it's arguably not a nest of infringement like YouTube, iFilm appears to host more than a handful of videos for which its corporate parent Viacom does not own the copyright. More importantly, Viacom isn't engaging in the kind of proactive infringement identification practices it expects of YouTube, which may cause problems for them in court. 'if Viacom isn't willing to take the same steps with iFilm that it wants YouTube to take with copyrighted content, Viacom may have a harder time making its case before the judge presiding over the case. "It would have some persuasive value with a judge if YouTube says 'look, they're ranting and raving about all this infringement occurring on my site and they're not doing anything about it themselves,'" said copyright attorney Greg Gabriel.'"
if YouTube could say, "We take proactive steps to limit infringment, and respond within our stated guidelines to complaints of infringement. Viacom does neither." YouTube could be seen as coming up short on the limit side...They do, however, as far as I can tell, jerk videos pretty quickly upon a claim of infringement.
I think it's more like, "Your honor, the industry standard is to not self-police your sites. It's a public site and people can upload copyrighted material. All Viacom has to do is tell us which items are infringing and we can remove them. See, even Viacom doesn't self-police themselves on iFilm..."
There's sort of a fine line between the two...
The key thing here is Judicial Estoppel. Anything Viacom says in court in their case against YouTube, they cannot contradict when they are the defendant in someone else's suit against Ifilm.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
IANAL either, but this is the doctrine of unclean hands. It can be used to get the YouTube case laughed out of court. Which it should. Viacom is expecting YouTube to do something Viacom does not do itself on its own, similar website. Buh-bye, Mr. Redstone.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Not exactly. However, it goes to underscore the unreasonability of Viacom's request, and to further illustrate the fact that even the most stringent procedures in this arena will let stuff through. I'm telling you, though, that under Grokster and Sony Viacom doesn't have a chance to win.